Cliché is the word for it. This movie has so many clichés that you remember twenty other movies that had the same theme and their characters, the same quirks. Despite having two Hollywood heavyweights, ‘The Taking of Pelham123’ does not live up to its billing.
The plot revolves around a disgruntled Wall Street banker Bernard Ryder, who had to spend ten years in prison for his alleged irregularities, who decides to hijack a subway train in New York (surprise surprise) and wants a ransom paid out within a specified time limit (surprise surprise), else a passenger will be killed for every minute of delay (surprise surprise). He takes to an operator in the train traffic control room Walter Garber, who is by the way undergoing investigation for a bribery scam himself and wants him to be his point man in getting the ransom arranged. Is he able to pull it off is what the story tries to answer.
The plot is so predictable, that you can visualize the ending right at the beginning. There is an attempt at some psychobabble when the hostage taker tries to make the operator confess to his bribery scam, but on the whole, there is nothing to write home about. Tony Scott, who gave us movies like ‘Top Gun’ gives the film the same twilight feel to it and does manage to create some moments of tension, but is unable to convince the viewer that there is something here that he ought to be looking forward to.
John Travolta as Ryder and Denzel Washington as Garber are utterly wasted in their roles. They are neither given good lines nor a good plot to do justice to their talent. James Gandolfini as the New York mayor that everyone loves to hate does provide some comic relief but that’s about it.
‘The Taking of Pelham 123’ is avoidable unless you are a Denzel/Travolta fan or if you are on a long distance flight which has no other movie playing. Even then, you would much rather watch Steven Segal in ‘Under Siege 2’.
